El Centro Fellows | Small Wars Journal

The El Centro Fellows have expertise in and commitment to Latin America, support SWJ's particular focus on the small wars in the region, and agree with SWJ's general approach to advancing discussion and awareness in the field through community dialog and publishing.

El Centro Associates are actively engaged in research or practice in the region and in transnational organized crime or insurgency. The Fellows have already made significant and distinguished contributions to the field through the course of their career. The Senior Fellows are Fellows that are actively engaged in producing SWJ El Centro and managing our work in this focus area.

Biographies

In alphabetical order, by last name:

Malcolm Beith is a freelance journalist and author of The Last Narco (Grove Press, 2010)— about the life of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera— the undisputed leader of the Sinaloa Cartel. He is fluent in Spanish, lived in Mexico from 2007 to 2009, and has been tracking news stories in El Universal, Reforma, and La Jornada for years concerning allegations of ties between the Mexican political parties and the Sinaloa Cartel. While based in Mexico City, he regularly traveled to the hills of Sinaloa, Michoacan and Ciudad Juarez to conduct field research; he also visited several penitentiaries throughout the country to talk to drug traffickers. He has extensive contacts throughout Mexican officialdom; and regularly visits Mexico to update his reporting on the drug war. He wrote about the drug war regularly for Newsweek, and since the publication of The Last Narco, he has written pieces on the drug war for Foreign Policy Magazine, The Sunday Times, National Catholic Reporter, World Politics Review, The Sun (UK), Nogales International, FHM magazine, High Times and The Australian.

Robert J. Bunker is an Epochal Warfare Studies scholar and security consultant focusing on non-state opposing force research, analysis, and defeat strategies. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Claremont Graduate University, five other university degrees, and has both undertaken and provided counter-terrorism related training. He has over 200 publications including numerous edited works, booklets, chapters, and articles in policy, law enforcement, and military venues. Past associations include the Counter-OPFOR Corporation, University of Southern California, FBI Academy (as Futurist in Residence), National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center—West, and the Los Angeles Terrorism Early Warning Group. Recent publications include Red Teams and Counterterrorism Training (University of Oklahoma Press, 2011) with Steve Sloan and the edited work Narcos Over the Border: Gangs, Cartels and Mercenaries (Routledge, 2011).

Hal Brands is Assistant Professor of Public Policy at Duke University. He is the author of Latin America’s Cold War (Harvard Press, 2010), and From Berlin to Baghdad: America’s Search for Purpose in the Post-Cold War World (Kentucky Press, 2008). He has written several studies on Latin American security issues for the Department of the Army, the Department of Defense, and SOUTHCOM.

Patrick Corcoran is an analyst for InSight Crime who specializes in Mexican security. A former resident of Torreón, in northern Mexico, Patrick also writes the blog Norteando for the Mexican magazine Este País. Patrick has written extensively about Mexican politics and security, publishing pieces in outlets like World Politics Review, Harvard International Review, and Foreign Policy in Focus. Patrick is presently pursuing an MA at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, with a concentration in Latin American studies and emerging markets.

Vanda Felbab-Brown is a fellow in Foreign Policy at the Brookings Institution, in the 21st Century Defense Initiative and the Latin America Initiative. She is an expert on illicit economies and international and internal conflicts and their management, including counterinsurgency. She focuses particularly on South Asia, Burma, the Andean region, Mexico, and Somalia. Dr. Felbab-Brown is the author of Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs (Brookings Institution Press, 2009) which examines military conflict and illegal economies in Colombia, Peru, Afghanistan, Burma, Northern Ireland, India, and Turkey. She is also the author of numerous policy reports, academic articles, and opeds. A frequent commentator in U.S. and international media, Dr. Felbab-Brown regularly testifies on these issues in the U.S. Congress. She received her Ph.D. in political science from MIT and her B.A. from Harvard University.

Steven S. Dudley is the co-director of InSight, a new non-profit initiative with offices in Bogotá and Washington DC that monitors organized crime in the Americas. He is the former Bureau Chief of The Miami Herald in the Andean Region and the author of Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia (Routledge, 2004). Dudley has also reported from Mexico, Haiti, Brazil, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Miami for National Public Radio, the BBC, and The Washington Post, among others. In addition to his work at InSight, he has done a documentary film on the life and career of a lawyer that defends Colombian drug traffickers and paramilitaries, and he has written policy briefs for the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars and the International Crisis Group. Dudley has a B.A. in Latin American History from Cornell University and an M.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. He has won numerous journalism prizes and was awarded the prestigious Knight Fellowship at Stanford University in 2007.

Adam Elkus is an analyst specializing in foreign policy and security. He is currently Associate Editor at Red Team Journal. His articles have been published in The Atlantic, Small Wars Journal, West Point CTC Sentinel, The Huffington Post, Defense Concepts, and other related publications. He blogs at Rethinking Security and Fear, Honor, and Interest. Elkus has partnered with John P. Sullivan in analyzing unconventional threats in Latin America and beyond since 2008, and currently pursues graduate study at Georgetown's Security Studies Program.

George W. Grayson is the 1938 Professor of Government at the College of William and Mary. He focuses on Latin American Politics, with a particular interest in Mexico. He has written 30 books and monographs on international affairs. Most recently, he co-authored, with Sam Logan, The Executioner’s Men: Inside Los Zetas (to be published by Transaction Press in March 2012). His other publications include: Consequences of Vigilantism in Mexico for the United States (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2011); Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State? (Transaction 2010), La Familia Drug Cartel: Implications for U.S.-Mexican Security (Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2010); and Mexico’s Struggle with Drugs and Thugs (Foreign Policy Association, 2009). He is a Senior Associate at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington, D.C. and an Associate Scholar of the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. Grayson earned his B.A. at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Johns Hopkins University (SAIS), and a J.D. at the Marshall-Wythe School of Law. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

Paul Rexton Kan is currently an Associate Professor of National Security Studies and the Henry L. Stimson Chair of Military Studies at the US Army War College. He is also the author of the book Drugs and Contemporary Warfare (Potomac Books, 2009). He recently completed field research along the US-Mexico border for his forthcoming book, Cartels at War: Mexico's Drug Fueled Violence and the Threat to US National Security (Potomac Books).

Robert Killebrew is a private consultant in national defense issues. He is a retired Army infantry colonel with service in U.S. Army Special Forces and airborne units, and he has taught national and military strategy at the Army War College. He is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow with the Center for a New American Security and co-author of Crime Wars; Gangs, Cartels and U.S. National Security (CNAS, 2010).

Carlos Nash Licona is a graduate of The University of Georgia, and is finishing his final year of law school at Stetson College of Law where he will graduate with a concentration in International Law. He has traveled and lived in countries around the world ranging from Mexico, Costa Rica, and Argentina, to Spain, England, and Portugal. This past summer, Nash was in Buenos Aires studying Argentina's Dirty War and the issues surrounding The Disappeared. His current scholastic focus is on terrorism and national security issues.

Samuel Logan is the Managing Director of Southern Pulse, a field-based professional services firm focused on Latin America. Mr. Logan holds an MA from the Monterrey Institute of International Studies, where he focused on black markets. From 1998 to 2009, Mr. Logan lived and worked in Latin America as an investigative journalist, reporting on security, energy, politics, economics, organized crime, terrorism and black markets in the region. He is the author of This is for the Mara Salvatrucha: Inside the MS-13, America’s Most Violent Gang (Hyperion, 2009), and is co-author with George w. Grayson of The Executioner’s Men: Inside Los Zetas (to be published by Transaction Press in March 2012).

Luz E. Nagle is a former Colombian judge and a Professor of Law at Stetson University College of Law, specializing in international law and international criminal law. She serves as an External Researcher in the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College, and has been involved as a trainer and advisor in several rule of law and military reform projects sponsored by the U.S. Departments of Defense, Justice, and State in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, and Panama. She is active in several international legal societies and currently holds seats on the ABA’s Criminal Justice Council and on the International Bar Association’s Legal Practice Division Council. Her scholarship focuses on U.S. foreign policy and regional security in the Americas, internal armed conflict, and transborder crime.

Eduardo Salcedo-Albarán is the current Director of SciVortex. By applying artificial intelligence, neuroscience and social networks analysis, he has researched in the areas of transnational organized crime, kidnapping, corruption, drug-trafficking and State Capture. He served as advisor for the Colombian Presidency and security agencies in Colombia. He has also worked with foundations, institutes, and public and private agencies in Latin America and the United States. He is part of EDGE Foundation, composed by thinkers “who are at the center of today's intellectual, technological, and scientific landscape”. Some of his books: Corrupción, Cerebro y Sentimientos (2007), La Mente Inorgánica (2009), El Crimen Como Oficio (2007), La Captura y Reconfiguración Cooptada del Estado (2009), and Illicit Networks Reconfiguring States: Social Network Analysis of Colombian and Mexican Cases (2010).

Robert H. Scales is one of America’s best known and most respected authorities on land warfare. He is currently President of Colgen, Inc, a consulting firm specializing in issues relating to landpower, wargaming and strategic leadership. Prior to joining the private sector Dr. Scales served over thirty years in the Army, retiring as a Major General. He commanded two units in Vietnam, winning the Silver Star for action during the battles around Dong Ap Bia (Hamburger Hill) during the summer of 1969. Subsequently, he served in command and staff positions in the United States, Germany, and Korea and ended his military career as Commandant of the United States Army War College. He is the author of Certain Victory, Firepower in Limited War, Future Warfare, Yellow Smoke: the Future of Land Warfare for America’s Military, The Iraq War: a Military History (with Williamson Murray), and Texas Border Security: A Strategic Military Assessment (with Barry McCaffrey). He is a graduate of West Point and earned his PhD in history from Duke University.

John P. Sullivan is a career police officer. He currently serves as a lieutenant with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies on Terrorism (CAST), a member of the advisory board of Southern Pulse Networked intelligence, and a member of the research group on Netwars and Peacenets at the Institute of Global Studies (Institut d'Etudes Mondiales) at the Fondation Maison des sciences de l'homme in Paris. He is co-editor of Countering Terrorism and WMD: Creating a Global Counter-Terrorism Network (Routledge, 2006) and Global Biosecurity: Threats and Responses (Routledge, 2010). He holds a bachelor of Arts in Government from the College of William and Mary and a Master of Arts in Urban Affairs and Policy Analysis from the New School for Social Research. His current research focus is the impact of transnational organized crime on sovereignty in Mexico and elsewhere.

Graham H. Turbiville, Jr. is a Senior Consultant and Researcher for Courage Service, Inc., McLean, Virginia (a Centra Technology Company), addressing Department of Defense and Intelligence Community programs dealing with cultural and geographic assessments in several areas of the world; a Senior Consultant for the Tribal Analysis Center, Leesburg, Virgina, producing history-based assessments of tribal/clan societies in contemporary war and conflict; and an Associate Fellow with the US Special Operations Command/ Joint Special Operations University (USSOCOM/JSOU). Earlier, Dr. Turbiville served 30 years in intelligence community analytical and leadership positions at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Department of the Army. These included as director/chief of long-range and current intelligence offices and directorates, director of a Joint Reserve Intelligence Center, and other assignments dealing with foreign combined arms, security, and special operations forces.

Diana Washington Valdez is an author, journalist and educator in El Paso, Texas. She has reported for more than 25 years on such topics as U.S.-Mexico relations, NAFTA, the U.S.-Mexico border, immigration, security, the economy, U.S. military issues, U.S. wars, drug-trafficking and transnational crime. She has received more than 30 international, national and regional awards and recognitions for her journalism and defense of human rights. She has master’s degree in political science and a bachelor’s degree in journalism, both from the University of Texas at El Paso. She has taught political science for 10 years, and has collaborated with other academics, journalists and advocates on projects in the United States, Mexico and other countries. She has presented at conferences coast to coast and in other countries. She has been interviewed by the New York Times, CNN, Al Jazeera, Televisa, National Public Radio, Univision and others. She is retired from the Army National Guard, where she served as an NCO and held a top secret clearance. She is the author of the book The Killing Fields: Harvest of Women (Cosecha de Mujeres, Spanish edition); her forthcoming books are Mexican Roulette: Last Cartel Standing, (pending release), and The Desert Killer (with Trish Long).